HP – 27″ IPS LED FHD FreeSync Monitor with Adjustable Height (HDMI, VGA) – Silver & Black

HP M27h FHD 27″ monitor with AMD Freesync If you’re in the market for a thin, adjustable monitor…

PROs: – Toolless design made for fast/simple assembly; the vertical support arm securely fastened to the base with two thumbscrews; an additional thumbscrew secured the back of the vertical mounting plate to the rear of the monitor. HP even throws an HDMI cable into the box so I was hooked up and ready to go within a few minutes – The support base features some nice anti-skid rubber feet to keep the monitor from sliding around while not taking up too much desk real estate beneath the panel – The monitor stand offers an integrated cable routing clip and 4″ of vertical height adjustment with 5 or so degrees of forward tilt and a good 15 degrees of rearward tilt – Great QC on the panel itself–I found no dead pixels whatsoever and uniformity was very smooth with no obvious hot spots or dim zones on full-screen colors – Windows 11 immediately recognized the monitor and reported available refresh rates of 50Hz, 60Hz, and 75Hz – Virtually bezel-free design makes for a handsome and svelte presentation on your desktop; all menu and adjustment buttons are tucked away on the bottom of the panel’s enclosure with only a single non-intrusive (and defeatable) LED in the lower-right corner making for a totally streamlined and uncluttered look – Typical of IPS displays, off-axis viewing angle is substantial with only minor loss in brightness and color quality at the extremes; you can easily sit two-abreast for productivity work or 2-player gaming – 3 inputs (2 HDMI and 1 VGA) allow the monitor to pair with legacy hardware or act as an additional digital display for a media player/streamer or game console in addition to PC; there is even a limited video range option in the Brightness+ submenu to accommodate RGB signals from older video devices that cannot use the full range (0-255) of RGB values – Many picture quality and gaming-oriented customization options offer adjustments for various brightness and contrast settings; color settings and color profile selection; image adjustments including FreeSync, response time, sharpness, and image scaling; auto-sleep power settings; input selection; and various menu customization options including the ability to re-assign three of the menu buttons to different functions/shortcuts – Gamers especially will appreciate response times as fast as 5ms GtG (with overdrive set in the “Response Time” submenu to Level 5 – Fastest) as well as “Black Stretch” which progressively increases the visibility of details hidden in particularly dark areas of the screen–great for seeing hidden baddies, secret entrances, or additional treasures hiding in dark corners – The HP M27h’s inclusion of FreeSync 2 is a game-changer for anyone who has used only fixed-refresh monitors for PC gaming–my NVIDIA card immediately recognized the panel as G-Sync capable thanks to FreeSync’s open-source VRR implementation and NVIDIA’s move a few years back to support it. Gameplay was beautiful and buttery smooth and those of you with lower-end cards will undoubtedly appreciate how the variable refresh rate display helps eliminate stutters and tearing at lower FPS – The matte screen is simply outstanding for reducing glare without looking hazy or cheap – I’ve never had much use for many manufacturers’ gimmicky color profiles–I prefer a beautiful, vibrant, accurate picture to something that features a deep cast of blue (cool) or orange (warm, night, etc.). In particular, I was thoroughly turned off by HP’s earlier implementations of its HP Enhance+ picture mode–it featured totally blown-out detail/edge enhancement and sharpness settings that rendered images to look like they were repainted with comic book-style cell-shaded textures. However, this latest iteration of HP Enhance+ in the M27h isn’t all that bad. Yes, contrast, sharpness, and edge enhancement are all still through the roof, but I know some people really go for the added “pop” and easy-to-see details in certain types of games and it’s nice that HP gives you a picture option to accommodate those tastes that doesn’t *completely* butcher the original image – Personally, I have found that most HP monitors slightly accentuate greens out of the box. But with just minor RGB slider adjustments in the color menu (R: 255,G: 237,B: 252), I was able to dial in color accuracy to within a few degrees of 6500K at about 204 nits brightness. This is more than respectable color accuracy performance, especially for a budget monitor, and the resultant picture quality was just outstanding. Those of you without a colorimeter but are still after a fairly accurate picture would be well served picking the “Native” color profile which came in just a tad above neutral but offered an even brighter, more vibrant picture at almost 234 nits CONs: – There is typical IPS glow in the corners of the display, and while you probably won’t notice it much in actual use for productivity tasks, gaming, or widescreen media, it was readily apparent in a darkened room especially around pillarboxed 4:3 content – The sleek visual design sometimes made menu actuation and navigation a little more difficult than it needed to be. The power button is actually to the left of the power LED; it is marked by a VERY faint power icon printed on the silver bezel, but it’s virtually impossible to see so it’s hard to tell where exactly to place your finger (and how far back) to activate the control. There are no other dimly printed icons for the other menu buttons on the bezel so you have to blindly slide your fingers around even further to the left of where the power switch is likely to be until you feel one of the other menu buttons. Fortunately, HP does leave persistent OSD icons on the screen *exactly* above the locations of the menu buttons once the menus are actually visible on the screen–this does help considerably once you start navigating the menus and making adjustments – There is no VESA mounting point on the back of this monitor so you are forced to use the included stand–this is a real shame because the picture quality was nice enough that it would make for a killer budget multi-monitor setup on an adjustable or stackable swingarm – The included stand offers NO rotation whatsoever so you cannot use this monitor in portrait orientation–this was a crushing disappointment as the budget pricing would also make the M27h a very attractive auxiliary monitor during gaming, streaming, content creation, or productivity/document editing while flanking a larger widescreen or ultrawide monitor – The design cues of the display offer a bit of modern flair with a thicker base near the bottom of an otherwise paper-thin panel. Yet despite the lower center of gravity of the panel itself, and the really low mounting point of the panel to the stand, the monitor does not feel very solid on the desktop. Though you’re not going to easily knock it over, even lightly pressing any of the menu buttons results in a great deal of shaking, flex, and wobble of the entire monitor/stand assembly – You already know going in that this monitor doesn’t have any onboard speakers, but despite having 2 HDMI inputs, there is no 3.5mm audio jack for basic headphone output. This may reduce the value proposition of the M27h a multi-source media switcher/display for HDMI digital components–if audio is involved–because you have to route both audio signals separately (speakers, headphones, etc.) from both cables used for the monitor inputs In the end, this is really a strong-performing monitor for the dollar. Despite being very simple to use, it offers some deeper video/image customization options that will appeal to budget-conscious gamers, content creators, and productivity application users alike. The 27″ screen offers a lot of visual real estate and a very pleasing 1080p picture while the higher refresh rates and FreeSync 2 capabilities make it a great choice for light to moderate gaming where 100+ fps is not needed. Although the panel is captive to the included stand, and you are relegated to using it in landscape mode only, it would still make a great primary display or even part of a larger but reasonably priced multi-monitor setup so long as you have enough desk space to accommodate both monitor bases. For those of you who might be interested, here is a quick rundown of the temperature and output readings I obtained for the M27h’s other non-adjustable color profiles; in a refreshing change from one of the earlier HP monitors I used, you can still adjust settings like FreeSync, Black Stretch, Sharpness, and Response Time in the other color modes: – Warm: slightly over-saturated red w/little larger bump in green, under-saturated blue (5310K, 81 nits) – Neutral: very over-saturated green, under-saturated red (6832K, 179 nits) – Cool: under-saturated red, over-saturated greens, very over-saturated blue (9387K, 133 nits) – Native: slight cut in red, slight bump in green (6734K, 234 nits) – Night: completely blown out reds with deep cut in blue (3006K, 92 nits) – HP Enhance+: slight dip in red and slight bump in green (6836K, 179nits)

The HP M27h monitor is a nice looking monitor with a thin screen that makes it lightweight. It has a substantial stand that coordinates well with the bottom trim on the monitor. It comes with a quick setup guide that consists of a few drawn pictures. I prefer written instructions (or at least photos), but in this case it didn’t matter because it was easy to visualize how the pieces went together. The screws on the base come with an attached turning wing so that no tools are needed. The design is such that it is unlikely that the screws will strip out if the stand is unassembled and reassembled. The stand includes a cable guide to keep the cords in place. There is a VGA port and 2 HDMI inputs. Putting it together, installing it and having it ready to use took less than 15 minutes. I assumed the monitor had internal speakers and was surprised to see the red “x” over the sound icon in the system tray when I turned it on. I did some troubleshooting, but the audio devices setting still showed “no output devices found”. I couldn’t find any speaker information for this model on the HP website, but the Best Buy specifications confirmed that there are no internal speakers. This monitor has a matt, anti-glare, “Eye Ease” screen with eye-safe technology – a low blue light filter that is always on. The monitor is made with 85% recycled materials. It is Energy Star certified and compatible with Windows, Chrome and Mac. The measurements are 24 x 14 inches and 27 inches diagonally, which is a good size for multitasking. The horizontal and vertical viewing angles are a wide 178 degrees so there is no distortion when looking at the monitor from any direction. The height and the tilt are adjustable and there is no slippage. The screen stays firmly in the set position. The size of printed words in documents and email was larger and fuzzier than on the HP 4K monitor that I usually use. I tried to make the text size smaller, but the only options were larger. The onscreen menu controls are basic and limited to color, contrast and brightness. I increased the brightness from the default and changed the color setting to HP Enhance + which helped the sharpness a little bit, but the quality doesn’t come close to HP 4K. The fact that there are no speakers was disappointing as well as the fact that printed words aren’t crisp and clear. It should work fine for applications that don’t require a lot of reading – or for users who aren’t spoiled by 4K. Movie and video quality is very good with exceptional color, but would require external speakers. This is a good basic monitor, but not the best one that HP makes.